July 1, 2013
The Flame Throwers by Rachel Kushner
“A funny thing about woman and machines: the combination made men curious.”
I do wonder if one day there will be a literary genre distinguished by its treatment of women whose broken dreams are symbolized by their dissatisfaction with their kitchen renovations. I noticed this first in Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk, whose middle-class preoccupations were redeemed by Cusk’s Woolfian narrative, and then recently in Krista Bridge’s The Eliot Girls which was more Picoultian than Woolfian and left me frustrated with narrative in general. And so I turned to Rachel Kushner’s The Flame Throwers next, because it promised to be not Picoultian in the slightest and featured a female protagonist who never went into the kitchen at all.
Though to call her a “protagonist” is not entirely accurate, because Kushner’s narrator is more of an observer, and a cypher than one who the story happens to. We get a sense of her internal monologue, but not of her self–we don’t even know her name. (I am careful not to refer to her as “Reno” [um, for the city, not the abbreviation for “renovation”] though she is referred to as such in the book’s copy. But in an interview, Kushner remarks, “Twice, she’s referred to as Reno, and so reviewers have latched onto this.” And I don’t want Kushner to think that I am a latcher. Never.) This is a novel about motorcycles, motor racing, rubber manufacturing, Fascism and terrorism, which is the kind of novel that generally wouldn’t appeal to me, except that it’s also the book that everybody is talking about and for once I wanted to get in on that action. Plus, it’s a novel about all of these things from the point of view of a female character, and I was curious about that. And so I picked up The Flame Throwers, and perhaps I’ve got a thing for speed and crashes after all because I was hooked by page 21 with the story of a legendary American racer whose parachute failed and had to stop from 522 miles per hour on the salt flats of Utah.
Of course, to call Kushner’s character an “observer” is disingenuous, because while the novel doesn’t happen to her, her voice and perspective are certainly key to its construction. She has more agency than we can really understand. The story begins with Kushner’s character on the salt flats in 1977, riding her Valera motorcycle (which had come from her boyfriend back in New York, Sandro Valera, the estranged heir to the Italian motorcycle/tire manufacturing fortune). Her aim is to race her bike, and also to photograph other races. She is an artist, we learn, who has moved from Reno to New York where she met Sandro. Her racing plans are curtailed by an accident, however, and she, previously the lone wolf, ends up with the Valera racing team by virtue of her motorcycle’s make. She ends up setting a world record for female drivers in the Valera car, the Spirit of Italy, and a scheme is concocted wherein she will travel to Italy on the coattails of her racing fame.
And then the narrative takes us to New York nearly two years before, the girl from Reno arriving in the city to make herself (though we learn a few peculiar details to suggest she’s not entirely formless–she’d been a success as a ski racer years before, and once acted in a McDonalds commercial. She grew up in a household with two motorbike-mad cousins, and an uncle who watched TV in the nude. And even the most mundane detail begins to seem conspicuous because there are so few of them). She tells us, “I thought this was how artists moved to New York, alone, that the city was a mecca of individual points, longings, all merging into one great light-pulsing mesh and you simply found your pulse, your place.” But she fails to, remaining estranged from the city itself, from its art scene. She is young and naive, and through a cast of eccentric characters (“I once went to a house in the Hollywood Hills that was a glass dome on a pole, its elevator shaft. Belonged to a pervert bachelor and he had peepholes everywhere. He was watching me in the toilet. Some guy drugged me without asking first. Angel dust. I was on roller skates which presented a whole extra challenge.”) she meets artist Ronnie Fontaine, and falls in love with his best friend, Sandro Valera. She makes her place on the scene as Sandro’s girl, but overrides him when he resists the idea of her trip to Italy.
In chapters involving Sandro’s father, we learn the sordid details of how he made his fortune and these suggest just why Sandro is so uncomfortable with returning to Italy and why he is determined to remain distanced from his family heritage. When the trip finally happens, it is the disaster he predicted, as Sandro’s mother shows disdain for his American girl, and the whole family is troubled by political uprisings by their factory workers, which were part of a movement sweeping the country in 1977. And finally, our character is faced with the truth about her boyfriend’s intentions toward her, and in an instant she makes a decision that embroils her in Italy’s underground radical social movement.
Kushner’s prose thrums with a Didion-esque rhythm, and her narrative concerns read like a combination of “Good-Bye to All That” and “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”. Her sense of time and place is stunningly evoked, and while details waver in a few places, the overall impression is of remarkable realization. There is a reason everyone is talking about this book, and that’s because it’s a great American novel in the grand tradition but as rendered by a female hand, but then this novel with all its masculine concerns is a treatment of the feminine as well. What is the place of Kushner’s female character in this kind of story? Is she the I or just the eye? Does anybody hear her voice beyond us, the reader? We hear her, but what are the impressions of those who can see her? In a way, she is as invisible as the “China Girl” appearing among the first frames of movie film, ever present but anonymous and glimpsed by almost no one. Is this the extent of possibility for the woman artist? (“You’re not supposed to evoke real life. Just the hermetic world of a smiling woman holding a colour chart.”)
So much of this book’s impact comes from its evasive approach, which is summed up in its final sentence: “Leave, with no answer. Move on to the next question.” And that’s why so many people are talking about this book–because it’s a difficult one from which to draw tidy conclusions.
June 27, 2013
My review of The Dark by Lemony Snickett and Jon Klassen
Lucky me. I got to review The Dark, a new picture book by Lemony Snickett and Jon Klassen. It was such a pleasure to read and review.
““Laszlo was afraid of the dark,” the book begins. The accompanying illustration shows Laszlo playing with his trucks in a shrinking ray of light, the sun outside the window starting to set. When the sun goes down, shadows fall throughout the house, and Laszlo fends them off with his ever-present flashlight and night light. But when the bulb in his night light burns out, Laszlo is forced to face his deepest fears.”
Read the rest here. And get this book!
June 26, 2013
How To by Julie Morstad
I’ve never met a book illustrated by Julie Morstad that I didn’t like (see The Swing, and Singing Away the Dark, plus the Henry books) and so when I heard about How To, the book she’d illustrated and written, I was very excited. I liked the premise too, Morstad’s pictures answering the specific how-to’s on every page. The cover image, for example, is “How to make new friends.” The picture of the girl sitting at the top of the slide is “How to be brave.” The images are always a little bit surprising, never quite how you’d expect the text to be accompanied. “How to see the wind” is a group of children flying their kites–I love that! I also love the whimsy of Morstad’s children, the exquisiteness of their detail–slouchy socks, pleated skirts, the buttons on their overalls. They’re styled, stylish even, but also timeless. I admire the diversity as well, boys and girls playing together, kids of different colours, different races.
The premise is unbelievably clever, but How To‘s genius lies in its simplicity. I love the substance behind its charm as well, that the text is posing and the illustrations are answering such fundamental questions. “How to be happy” is the book’s final statement, accompanied by a two-page spread of children dancing, moving and being together. It’s a lesson as perfect as it is profound.
June 24, 2013
Today I am 34
I enjoy receiving bookish cards, and this one is pretty much as excellent as they come, sent via my Aunt from the Regional Assembly of Text. Today I am 34, which is a good age to be, I think. We’ve spent the day nicely, and it included a short bout of fiction writing while Stuart took Iris along for Harriet’s school drop-off. Also a nice period of Iris sleeping on me as I read The Flamethrowers, which I am enjoying so very much. (Forgive the lack of bookish content here. I finally finished reading I Capture the Castle and then got 100 pages into a book that turned out to be totally terrible. Looking forward to finding the time to write about The Flamethrowers. Also, I received The Silent Wife for my birthday, which I am very excited about! Anyway, since I resumed mobility, it has been challenging to find the time to read. I am often awake and idle at 4am, but I am so tired that I have to keep one eye shut to read lines of text, and even then they’re blurry.) We picked up Harriet and went out for lunch. We also get to go out for lunch again tomorrow because my favourite restaurant is closed on Mondays. Which is not to say that we didn’t go out for lunch yesterday too. Yes, it is sort of a habit. Anyway, after we went to our new favourite neighbourhood cafe, Redfish Bluefish, which features delicious baked goods, nice tea, really lovely and friendly staff and owner, and crafts, books and games to keep Harriet occupied. Our visit was especially notable because it led to Harriet’s first Wayne’s World reference afterwards, unbeknownst to her. (We try to reference Wayne’s World at least once a day in our family.) “It’s not just a clever name,” she told her grandmother on Skype, in regards to Redfish Bluefish. Because in fact there is a red fish and a blue fish. And now we’re home, the extreme heat is making the baby sleepy, we’re ordering a pizza for dinner and having oreo ice-cream cake to follow. Plus everyone is leaving me alone, or at least they have been. I hear somebody crying now, and I expect that she’s wanting to be fed…
June 20, 2013
A lesson about post-partum reading
I have learned a very important lesson about post-partum reading, which is that long books are anathema to the cause. I’ve been reading I Capture the Castle for days and days, and while I’m enjoying it enough, I’m making such slow and discouraging progress. I think that fast and short books are probably best for those of us who only have time to read with baby at the breast (and even with that, are usually joined by older sibling who wishes to poke baby in the cranium as she feeds, which is certainly enough to distract one from a book). Not least because the smaller books are easier to hold with one hand, but also because they give the illusion of productivity, action, time well-spent. “There,” I can say, setting another snappy book aside, “is something I’ve accomplished.” The opposite of reading a long book, or growing a baby for that matter. I require more immediate satisfaction that either activity can provide, I think. The latter one being particularly unrewarding, you see; though my efforts, my baby packed on 10 oz last week, but every person who glimpses her can only exclaim, “She’s so tiny!”
June 18, 2013
A Happy Anniversary
We enjoyed a nice date over a delicious breakfast out this morning with Iris asleep in the sling, and had a good time thinking of how far we’ve come since our seaside wedding eight years ago. Or even more remarkable, how far we’ve come since the last time we had a two-week old and I spent all my time sprawled half-naked on the carpet and crying…
June 17, 2013
New Kids’ Books We’ve Been Enjoying Lately
A new picture book by Kyo Maclear is a literary event. Her books (Spork, Virginia Wolf) are always extraordinary, and her latest, Mr. Flux, is no exception. Illustrated by Matte Stephens, the book tells the story of a boy called Martin who lives a very ordered life which is shook up when a new neighbour moves onto his street. The neighbour, Mr. Flux, calls himself an artist, though he doesn’t make sculptures or draw pictures. His art, instead, is the art of mixing things up, looking at ordinary objects in unusual ways and taking unconventional pathways throughout his days. In Mr. Flux, Maclear is alluding to the 1960s’ Fluxus art movement, though for those of us to whom such references fly above the radar, the book appeals in its simple lesson that change is not always to be resisted. It’s a lesson useful to younger readers, but one that I could also do with having enforced myself every once in a while.
And we love the new picture book by Mo Willems, That Is Not A Good Idea, which is so perfect for Harriet (age 4) as a listening-reader and as a reader beginning to read on her own. She likes the simple text, its repetition and that she is able to read along as I do. And I love the book’s proto-feminism and that it stars a Mother who out-foxes a fox–best ending twist ever! The book is stylized as an old fashioned movie, which you get a sense of in its trailer here. Once again, Mo Willems is a blockbuster smash.
June 16, 2013
Oh, Father’s Day
Oh, Father’s Day– I’ve got a good dad myself, and so do my children. And never am I more grateful to my co-parent than right now when we’re both adrift in newborn land. I bought Stuart’s Father’s Day presents (A Users Guide to Neglectful Parenting and Jamie Oliver’s Great Britain) a month ago because I remembered how the day got lost after Harriet was born. Amazed to find how much further along we are this time around though–I got up this morning and made us pancakes. We also have intentions of heading out for lunch today, which is brave of us. We’ll see how that goes. Yesterday we went on a picnic and Iris slept through it, which was some mark of success. I still can’t walk so far so it was a picnic on a patch of grass close to home, but it was sunshine, fresh air, fun and being in the world. Which feels like a miracle, actually. I am very proud of us, though of course it has not been all smooth sailing. The nights have been hard and if I could describe Iris’s general temperment, I’d have to employ the term “miserable”. In my experience of babies, this is fairly typical, though I’d been hoping to get something different this time around, one of those elusive “chilled out” babies you hear about sometimes. But it was not to be, and we’re exhausted. Last night, for just the second time in two weeks, we managed to get two three-hour blocks of sleep, which makes today feel quite glorious. Anyway, the fact is that without Stuart, none of this would be working at all. The greatest lesson of everything that went wrong after Harriet was born was that I need so much more support than I’d figured, that without that support, I’d fall apart. And Stuart has been amazing at providing that support, at making the nights not seem lonely, at keeping food and drink coming to help me get better, at keeping Harriet happy, at rocking Iris to sleep, at listening to my kvetching and fears and making nothing seem quite so bad. He’s working as hard as I am, which makes everything so much easier, and I’ve never been more aware of how lucky we are to have him in our lives.
June 13, 2013
Hobbling Out in the World
We made it to the Farmers Market yesterday, my first outing since coming home from the hospital. I had to hobble there while clutching my incision, and for the first time ever, we had to implore our slowpoke daughter not to walk so fast, but we made it and it was lovely to be in the world, even if the soundtrack was a bagpiper dueting with steel drummer on a version of Jamaica Farewell. We also came home with strawberries and raspberries, so it was definitely worth the trek. I’ve elected to spend today in bed though, partly because I don’t want to overdo it, and also because Iris was up most of the night, scarcely sleeping for more than an hour at a time.
It still remains true how much easier this experience of having a newborn baby has been. Part of this is because we skipped the stage where Baby loses 11% of her body weight and breastfeeding is as difficult as it is constant. Iris had surpassed her birth weight as of Monday and she’s doing very well, bouts of misery aside (which can be attributed to diagnosis:Baby). Partly because we knew what to expect in terms of the all-night fussiness and the problems which have no solutions. (This time I have not once paged the midwife because the baby refuses to go to sleep.) I am not resisting having Iris in bed with us when required, which was a huge hurdle before–everyone had warned that it was the slippery slope to the end of life as we know it, but now I know that it isn’t. I have not googled anything newborn-related to seek advice from uninformed, hysterical women who are as desperate as I am, and as I result, I do not feel so desperate. The holy trinity of a queen-sized bed, my smart-phone in the wee hours and the placenta pills continue to bolster us. My husband who is not going back to work anytime soon. All these things are making these days quite different than the last time we went through them. Also the knowledge that these are probably the last time we’ll go through them. It seems to me that having a second baby is like getting a tattoo after all.
When we went out into the world yesterday, I was not surprised to discover it was still there. It doesn’t seem surprising that life has gone on normally while our family has been changed forever. Iris’s arrival has not so shaken the foundation of our existence as Harriet’s did, mostly because we were parents already and have not had to weather the explosion of becoming so, and also because Harriet herself ties us to the world, to the pattern of ordinary days. Stuart gets up in the morning and takes her to school, and she comes home with dispatches from the world beyond the four walls of my room. She demands meals and bedtime, stories read, games played. “Pay the most attention to me,” she demands, ever comfortable with voicing her needs. And so we have not been able to be sucked into that funnel cloud of newborn mania, crazed internet searches, middle of the night despair, logs of inputs and outputs. Downstairs we have the Hospital for Sick Children Baby Care book, and if you open it you will find the marginalia of a madwoman. There is a chapter on sleep habits, and I went through it with a pen underlining every single bit of text. Obviously, the notes were unhelpful, and I’ve not opened that book in quite some time.
Which is not to say that I didn’t cry this morning after being up all night when the bad baby still wouldn’t settle. But I had a nap and then I felt better, and I’m looking forward to walking a little bit farther tomorrow.
